Hibiscus Punch – A Beautiful Natural Pink Limeade.

When my granddaughters, family and friends visit, we swim or walk in the morning, take a mid day break, referred to as quiet time, where everybody can read or join me in the kitchen and back to the beach in the afternoon. My granddaughters go on food fads where one trip they will drink gallons of juice and not enough milk products, the next trip it’s all milk. Last trip is was no juice at all. However, I try to balance this by what we cook together and since they help make the healthy item, they alter their consumption to eat what they cooked.

When I suggested we make Hibiscus punch to increase their juice consumption, everybody, except my son-in-law came to play. Let’s get the ingredients out of the way and then we can explain the method by showing everybody’s participation.

Ingredients:

6 Hibiscus flowers in full bloom

5 Ripe Limes (about 4 ounces of juice)

water as needed to make a half gallon

½ cup sugar

½ tsp ginger

Helping Mom Make Juice

In this picture Ms. Ana is helping her mother extract the fruit from passion fruit for juice which we made at the same time but that’s a story for another day.

Flowers for Hibiscus Punch

The starting point is 6 beautiful red hibiscus flowers which really don’t add much taste but they certainly contribute to a wonderful pink lemonade.

Putting the Petals into the Pot

The petals are removed from the flowers and placed in a pot to be covered with water and heated to extract the color. In our case when we are playing and cooking with kids, it is just more fun way to use the coffeepot although my daughter who is a lover of passion fruit juice used a real pot to make hers.

The Cooked Flowers Turn The Water Purple

Water is run through the coffeemaker on to the petals in the pot and you get that wonderfully rich purple color from red flowers. (about 10 -11 cups)

Rolling the Limes

Now to squeeze, limes by hand, you first roll them under pressure and you can use either your hands or feet. I demonstrated how to do one with my foot and then rinsed it off but Todd and Cayla opted to use their hands. Yes the yellow fruit is actually limes that are tree ripened outside my front door.

Turn Inside Out to Free Juice

Once the pulp is broken down, you cut the limes in half and turn them inside out over a cup, the juice is freely extracted from the pulp.

Pour Lime Juice into Pot

The juice is added to the pot after the flowers have been removed being careful to keep the seeds out.

Stir in Sugar and Powered Ginger

After that, the sugar and the ginger is added to the final jug it is to be stored in and any adjustments to sweetness, ginger or sugar is made at this time.

A good time was had by all and no local juices were wasted. The kids and I drank the Hibiscus Punch for breakfast, the other adults seemed to prefer Cruzan Rum and Passion fruit juice later in the day.

One Response to “Hibiscus Punch – A Beautiful Natural Pink Limeade.”

[…] is that old saying about what do you do when God gives you lemons and of course the answer is make Lemonade which was covered in a previous post. Now the next question is what do you do when your Grandchildren come to visit and leave you with a […]